Barbarian Rage

[satantrik]

I don't play barbarians, but I've been musing on barbarian builds, especially epic ones. The barbarian's abilities quickly become redundant in a PW or duel-server where items that give permanent +'s to strength and constitution exist. Especially in PWs where a barbarian's companions can buff their strength and constitution on top of whatever items they have. I have two proposals regarding the barbarian's rage ability, but first an overview...

The maximum + to an ability score is 12 and the primary bonus a barbarian gets when raging is strength and constitution. Let's take a look at what these bonuses are exactly:

Rage: +4 strength, +4 constitution, +2 will, -2 AC.

Greater Rage (level 15 ): +6 strength, +6 constitution, +3 will, -2 AC.

Mighty Rage (selectable feat at level 21+, prereq. of 21+ strength): +8 strength, +8 constitution, +4 will, -2 AC.

The Rage ability is comparable to the Bard's song ability: a spell-like ability that grants multiple buffs whose uses/day is granted by levels in the relevant class. The Bard's song ability doesn't grant ability score bonuses, but bonuses that ALWAYS stack: to hit, damage, saves, etc. While the bard-song is always useful and increasing its bonuses always a good thing (through bard levels and perform ranks), the barbarian's rage starts to become irrelevant, especially if a combination of items and spell-buffs grant +9 or more to strength or constitution. All the higher level rage abilities provide only an increased will save for -2 AC.

In addition to Mighty Rage, the barbarian can select two feats at level 21+ that enhance their rage. Out of the box they are:

Terrifying Rage (Barbarian level 21+, Intimidate 25+ ranks): Enemies make a will save versus the barbarian's intimidate skill check (d20 + rank). Enemies will either flee, receive a -2 to hit and saves, or are immune depending on how their HD compares to the barbarian's.

Thundering Rage (Barbarian level 21+, Strength 25+): +2d6 damage on critical hits when raging, 50% chance of deafening opponent for 3 rounds.

These two feats could be more useful and in fact differ from their counterparts in the Epic Level Handbook.

Terrifying Rage in the ELH makes those that fail the save with less HD than you panic: -2 to hit, saves, and skill checks and runs away. Those who fail the save with equal or less than twice your HD are only shaken: -2 to hit, saves, and skill checks. Those with twice your HD or more are immune.

Thundering Rage in the ELH actually makes your attacks "Thundering" when raging as per the magical weapon attribute in the DMG: +1d8 sonic damage on crit for x2 critical multiplier, +2d8 sonic damage on crit for x3 critical multiplier, etc. Instead of 50% chance of deafness the target is granted a fort save of 10 + 1/2 character level and is permanently deafened.

After this review let me now list my proposals.

Proposal #1: The barbarian's bonus to strength and consitution amount to a bonus to attack, damage, hit points, and fortitude saves. Change the bonuses granted by rage to a direct bonus to these scores so that the barbarian's rage ability never becomes redundant and will provide incentive to investing in the rage ability at level 15+ and the epic feat post 20. Either have the bonuses scale as they are (two points of increase: level 15, post 20 feat) or have the bonuses scale with level like a bard's. A more extreme change could have the barbarian's ranks in intimidate affect the barbarian's rage in the same way ranks in perform do for a bard.

Proposal #2: Change the two epic barbarian feats, Terrifying Rage and Thundering Rage, to (or at least closer to) their PnP counterparts.

One aspect of deafness worth noting is that in addition to an inability to make listen checks it causes 20% spell failure for spells with verbal components in PnP. This should definitely be implemented (I have no idea if this is one of the many things Bioware overlooked) and would make Thundering Rage (and thunderstones) much more useful and make the Epic Barbarian something to be feared by spell casters.

Either Terrifying Rage's description is wrong or "panic" doesn't cause a skill check penalty in NWN. If it is in fact a discrepancy it should be changed to come more in line with how fear works in the rest of the game. The description in-game isn't very clear, but the ELH 's description of who is affected and how is probably how it works in NWN.


Thanks for reading! Any thoughts?

[AlienOverlord]

I think the maximum item bonus to stats is +5 on this server for now (am I wrong?). That being the case then rage is still useful unless you get a bull strength cast on you (or drink the potion). Not many people use the con bonus spell (I stopped using it after a few times dying when I tried resting the the loss of bonus hp was enough to kill me) so you're likely to get the full benefit of the con bonus. Also, the differences in the players hanbook and the way the feats are currently implented don't seem great enough to worry about changing.

That said, I think if the changes could be changed to a bonus to hit and damage and bonus hit points it would be pretty cool. Only concern would be a dex based barbarian (people try weird things) would get a bonus to hit when they wouldn't if they had gotten a str bonus.